We May Have Already Seen the Best Film at Cannes This Year

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In my perspective, growing up on the farm where the character Alma, from the novel “Sound of Falling”, resides, there are uniformed women who seem as much a part of our household and grounds as our family members. To me, as a young girl with a thoughtful expression and long, white-blonde braids, these women are familiar figures. However, when Alma shares certain harsh truths about their lives in her voiceovers, she does so with an unassuming frankness that makes the revelations even more startling.

It’s understood among us that these women, who appear to be at the mercy of the men on the farm, have been made infertile by a village specialist to make them ‘safe’. As a child, Alma has taken this information in, pondering it, not yet fully comprehending its implications.

But fate and tragedy bring a new perspective to this treatment, revealing its inhumanity. With a devastating new awareness, Alma, like women throughout history, acts as expected. She speaks of the incident using a delicate term, recognizing that the veneer of civility we uphold is merely a polite facade she’s expected to help preserve.

Titled Sound of Falling, the second film by Mascha Schilinski, a writer-director hailing from Berlin, can be summarized as a rich narrative chronicling the hidden tales of women residing on a farm in the rural Altmark region of Germany, enclosed by the Elbe. This remarkable production seamlessly weaves together the lives of four generations of families with such complexity and emotional resonance that it seems like a psychic transmission. The film has set a challenging benchmark for this year‘s Cannes competition, as it may be difficult for another feature to surpass its excellence. Spanning over a century, Sound of Falling introduces Alma, born near the turn of the 20th century, as its earliest character. Erika (Lea Drinda) is set during the ’40s, an era where war casts a shadow even on her secluded home, while Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) inhabits the ’80s in what has become East Germany. Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), the last of the main characters, lives in the contemporary age characterized by paddleboards and AirPods, having moved to the farmhouse with parents who are restoring it themselves. Though significant events unfold in the background of most of these periods, the film focuses on the perspectives of characters who are children or teenagers, offering immediate and personal accounts. It presents a collective coming-of-age narrative, yet the meaning of this phase and what each young woman chooses to recall and prioritize is integral to its message.

Suitably, for a movie centered around unrecorded viewpoints, Schilinski consistently crafts an innovative cinematic vocabulary within Sound of Falling. This language is both impressionistic and sensual, yet deeply rooted in the lives of its young characters, making viewers feel as if they’ve been transported straight into their minds. The audience is invited to transition from bewilderment to immersion as Schilinski navigates through time, sometimes lingering in a specific year for an extended period and other times moving swiftly forward. This journey mirrors the experiences of her characters as they navigate the complexities of the world, which includes understanding mortality, appreciating their bodies, and discovering self. These segments aren’t solely about trauma, but also desire, curiosity, melancholy, and happiness; the mood of Sound of Falling can switch from dreamy to painfully sharp, with protagonists at times providing voiceovers and other times relinquishing narration to secondary characters. The stunning scenery serves as an indifferent canvas for events that can be quite disturbing, and Schilinski, while typically choosing shots that emphasize tangibility, occasionally creates tableaus reminiscent of paintings or faded photographs—the only lasting visual proof of each era.

In my perspective, when common themes emerge throughout different time periods, it’s not just about the universal nature of what’s being portrayed on screen, but rather how the past can resonate over decades. We often like to believe that change happens swiftly or comprehensively, yet there’s a certain mystique surrounding the movie’s subtle rhymes because they leave room for interpretation and avoid clear symbolism.

Two of the characters, spanning generations, indulge in intricate fantasies of suicide meant to instruct their loved ones, which sadly echoes a familiar portrayal of an internal desire for retribution through self-harm. Their mothers across the years struggle with involuntary reactions – one suppressing, the other expressing, reflecting the ways our bodies can deceive us.

The recurring whisper of “warm” is intriguing: heard once by a woman caressing her husband’s genitals, once by a relative touching blood from Angelika’s foot, and once by Erika as she nestles in bed. I believe this repetition aims to underscore that these intense fragments are all woven into the enigmatic fabric of human existence – one that is far more intricate, ominous, and multi-layered than the stories we eventually share openly.

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2025-05-14 20:06